It is true that Machiavelli was not wealthy; his habits of prodigality made his fortune insufficient for his needs.[1] It is true that he could ill bear the enforced idleness of country life, after being engaged for fifteen years in the most important concerns of the Florentine Republic.

But neither his poverty, which, after all, was but comparative, nor his inactivity, for which he found relief in study, justifies the tone of the conclusion to this letter.

When we read it, we cannot help remembering the language of another exile, who while he tells us-- Come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e com' e duro calle Lo scendere e 'l salir per l' altrui scale -- can yet refuse the advances of his factious city thus: 'If Florence cannot be entered honorably, I will never set foot within her walls.

And what?
Shall I not be able from any angle whatsoever of the earth to gaze upon the sun and stars?
shall I not beneath whatever region of the heavens have power to meditate the sweetest truths, unless I make myself ignoble first, nay ignominious, in the face of Florence and her people?
Nor will bread, I warrant, fail me!' If Machiavelli, who in this very letter to Vettori quoted Dante, had remembered these words, they ought to have fallen like drops of molten lead upon his soul.

But such was the debasement of the century that probably he would have only shrugged his shoulders and sighed, 'Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.' [1] See familiar letter, June 10, 1514.
In some respects Dante, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo Buonarroti may be said to have been the three greatest intellects produced by Florence.
Dante in exile and in opposition, would hold no sort of traffic with her citizens.